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After he’d explained to Pedro what he wanted, a thought struck him.
‘Do you know where Amy’s working now?’
‘She’s back at the British Museum.’
No wonder she’d turned her phone off. She would be working. ‘Do you have the number?’
Pedro scrolled through his phone until he found the relevant number and thrust the phone at him.
Helios put it to his ear whilst indicating that Pedro could start on the task he’d set for him. It rang a couple of times, a passage of time that to Helios’s ears was longer than for ever, before it was answered.
‘Put me through to Amy Green,’ he said.
‘One moment, please.’
There followed a merry little game in which he was routed to varying offices until a voice said, ‘Ancient Greece Department.’
‘I wish to speak to Amy Green.’
‘I’m sorry, sir, but Amy is on leave. She’ll be back on Monday.’
‘Do you know where she’s gone?’
‘As far as I’m aware she’s attending a funeral.’
‘Thank you.’
Disconnecting the call, his brain reeling, Helios rubbed the nape of his neck.
Now what?
And as he wondered what the hell his next step should be his heart went out to her. To think she too had lost someone important... She would be in need of comfort just as he—
And in the space of a heartbeat he knew whose funeral she’d attended.
Hope filled him, spreading from his toes right to the roots of his hair.
He put a call through to his private secretary. ‘Talia,’ he said as soon as she answered, ‘I need you to find Amy Green for me. She’s in the country. Go through to Immigration and take it from there.’
To her credit, Talia took his instructions in her stride. ‘The Immigration Minister is here.’
‘Good. Speak to him. Now.’
While all this was going on Pedro had completed the task he’d been set and so the pair of them reset the alarms, closed the museum and went back to the wake.
Helios found Talia in a quiet corridor, with her phone pressed to her ear by her shoulder, writing information on her hand. She gave him a thumbs-up and carried on her conversation.
‘She’s at the airport,’ she said without preamble a few minutes later. ‘Her flight back to England leaves in forty-five minutes. The passengers for her flight will be boarding any minute.’
‘I need to get to the airport.’
A tremor of fear flashed over Talia’s face. ‘All the roads are blocked. You’ll never make it in time.’
‘Watch me.’
With that, he headed back into the stateroom and, ignoring everyone who tried to speak to him, found the butler of Theseus’s private villa, Philippe, a man who looked as if he should be catching the surf, not running a Prince’s household.
He pulled him aside to speak to him privately.
‘You have a motorbike, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Your Highness.’
‘Is it here at the palace?’
‘It’s in the staff courtyard.’
‘I need to borrow it.’
‘Now?’
‘Now.’
‘Do you know how to ride?’
‘You have the time it takes us to walk there to teach me. Let’s go.’
* * *
Amy stared out of the oval window with a heavy heart.
She was glad she’d come.
It had been a snap decision, driven by a sense of certainty that she had to go, to pay her respects to the man for whom she’d devoted almost six months of her life to creating an exhibition of his life.
Watching Helios and his brothers walking with military precision in front of the coffin, their gazes aimed forward, knowing how they must be bleeding inside...
The crowds had been so thick there had been no chance of Helios catching sight of her, but even so she hadn’t taken any chances, keeping a good distance from the barrier.
What good would it have done for him to see her? The Princess had been there for him, just as Amy had known she would be, travelling in an official car with Theseus’s and Talos’s fiancées.
A steward made his sweep down the aisle, checking everyone’s seat belts were fastened. The plane began to move. Over the speakers came the sombre voice of the captain, welcoming them all to this flight to London.
The ache in her chest told her she’d been wise to get a return flight home straight after the funeral. Any longer and the temptation to call Helios and seek him out would have become too great to resist. One night on Agon was as much as she’d been prepared to risk.
She’d taken her mother’s advice to heart, and God knew she was trying to get herself an orange.
She’d taken up her old job at the museum and enrolled in a postgraduate course on the Ancient Romans, which she would start in September. She figured she might as well expand her knowledge so that her life wasn’t all about Agon and its people, whether from history or the present. There was a big world out there to explore and learn about.
